- South Korea: Officials order evacuation after reported white phosphorus leak at US base
Source: ABC News
“South Korean authorities on Tuesday briefly ordered civilians to evacuate after what they described as a white phosphorus leak at a U.S. military base near the capital, Seoul. Officials in the city of Pyeongtaek urged nearby residents to move to a safe location and avoid skin exposure after the leak at the Osan Air Base was detected at around 5 p.m. They lifted the evacuation order several hours later, saying decontamination work had been completed, according to text messages sent out by the city. … In a statement, the U.S. 51st Fighter Wing did not mention a leakage of white phosphorus but said it established a 1,000-foot (300-meter) safety cordon around the base ‘due to a ground mishap and out of an abundance of caution’ to protect the base and the local populace. It said reports of a general evacuation of the air base were false.” (07/28/26)
- UK: Lyft and Baidu start testing robotaxis in London
Source: Engadget
“As it promised last year, Baidu has started testing its robotaxis in London along with partners Lyft and Freenow, the companies said in a press release. Baidu’s Apollo Go RT6 will start appearing in the UK capital (with test drivers aboard to start with), while Lyft and and Freenow, the German taxi company Lyft now owns, will take care of booking passengers starting next year. The trials are part of the partnership between Lyft and Baidu, with the aim of eventually deploying thousands of autonomous vehicles across Europe. To expedite that plan, Lyft acquired Freenow last year to take advantage of its large taxi network operating in the UK and Germany.” (07/28/26)
https://www.engadget.com/2224882/lyft-and-baidu-start-testing-robotaxis-in-london/
- From Biden’s Potemkin Presidency to Trump’s Potemkin War
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Jim Bovard“In eighteenth-century czarist Russia, a fake village was built by a Russian governor named Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin to deceive Catherine the Great about the condition of the peasants she ruled. ‘Potemkin Village,’ according to Time magazine, ‘signifies any deceptive or false construct, conjured often by cruel regimes, to deceive both those within the land and those peering in from outside.’ In Washington a few years ago, the media partnered with the Biden administration to concoct a Potemkin Village to deceive Americans about President Joe Biden’s faltering fitness for office. … Donald Trump is not as physically feeble as Joe Biden, though he is a shadow of his vitality in his first term. But Trump’s delusions on the Iran War seem as bad or worse than any imaginary vision that sent Biden wandering off stage at the wrong time.” (07/28/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/from-bidens-potemkin-presidency-to-trumps-potemkin-war
- Free Sam Tunick — and Make the Privacy Tool He Used the Universal Standard
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“[Sam Tunick] was asked for a PIN to unlock his phone for an illegal, warrantless, and unjustified search. He gave the agents a number … a ‘duress code’ which, upon use by an agent, not by Tunick, erased all data on the phone and performed a complete factory reset rather than unlocking the device. Now, Tunick finds himself facing trial on charges of violating 18 US Code §2232, ‘Destruction or removal of property to prevent seizure.’ Two problems with the charge: First, Tunick didn’t destroy or remove anything. The CBP agent who stole his phone did. Second, the law only applies to ‘authorized’ searches and seizures. Absent a warrant issued by a court ‘upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized,’ no such ‘authorization’ exists.” (07/28/26)
- Minority Report: FBI Seeks AI for Political Watch List
Source: Reason
by Daniel Boguslaw“The FBI office in charge of maintaining the terrorist watch list is seeking an artificial intelligence system for pre-crime policing, according to procurement documents obtained by Reason. The request for information for vendors, posted by the FBI’s procurement division in March, solicits potential bidders for a project that would supercharge the Threat Screening Center (TSC) with new predictive AI capabilities—just as its focus moves from Islamist terrorism to domestic dissent. … The terrorist watch list maintained by the TSC is by its very nature a pre-crime entity—it seeks to prosecute crimes before they occur.” (07/28/36)
https://reason.com/2026/07/28/minority-report-fbi-seeks-ai-for-political-watch-list/
- Libertarianism and Poverty
Source: ProSocial Libertarians
by Andrew Jason Cohen“It’s never been clear to me why anyone would think that lowering the tax burden on wealthy people is more important than lowering it on poor people. I think we should lower the burden as much as possible on everyone, consistent with maintaining a just society. … Consider the mortgage deduction: why is it good to give home owners a tax break but not good to give home renters a tax break? What justifies that deviation? I’m not offering an answer; I want us to take the question seriously.” (07/28/26)
https://prosociallibertarians.substack.com/p/libertarianism-and-poverty
- Don’t want data centers spiking your power bill? Let them build their own grid
Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Joseph Verruni & Travis Fisher“Kentuckians are right to worry that data centers will drive up their electric bills. When a single facility demands as much power as Owensboro, someone pays for the new plants and wires that serve it. The General Assembly is still arguing over how to make sure that someone isn’t the residential ratepayer. There is a simple answer, and Kentucky law currently forbids it: let large consumers build their own grid.” (07/28/26)
- The $80 billion healthcare loophole disguised as charity
Source: Washington Examiner
by Jeffrey Mazzella“In 1992, Congress created what’s commonly known as the 340B program in order to help safety-net hospitals and clinics stretch limited resources to serve low-income and uninsured patients. By requiring pharmaceutical manufacturers to sell prescription drugs at steep discounts to qualifying hospitals and clinics, the logic went, the 340B program aimed to keep medications accessible and affordable in underserved communities. Nearly 35 years later, however, the program bears little resemblance to what Congress had in mind, and there’s no reliable way to know whether patients still benefit from its growth.” (07/28/26)
- The Obstruction Doctrine: What Level of Governance Is Appropriate for AI?
Source: Cato Institute
by Kevin T Frazier“The proper delineation of authority between the federal government and the states has often been the subject of controversy in the debate over AI policy. Proponents of both approaches reference the constitutional clauses that support their claim. The reality is that this issue, as with many things in AI, is not a neat list of discrete policy matters. Instead, there is a clear mix of AI policy issues that require national attention—those that are the exclusive domain of the states and the issues that can be taken on by both the federal government and the states (or a collection of states).” [editor’s note: Or, you know, all governments could keep their grubby hands off – TLK] (07/28/26)
https://www.cato.org/blog/obstruction-doctrine-what-level-governance-ai
- Elbridge Colby and the Art of Defending the Indefensible
Source: The Bulwark
by Joseph StiebIt’s one of the worst jobs in Washington: Elbridge Colby, the under secretary of defense for policy, is tasked with explaining Donald Trump’s erratic foreign policy to the public. But you could just as easily say he volunteered to launder Trump’s bellicose, bizarre acts by finding an intellectual coherence that isn’t there. The 46-year-old grandson of former CIA Director William Colby and graduate of Harvard and Yale is a born-and-bred courtier to the powerful. He boosted lies about the 2020 election and spent the subsequent four years angling for a position in the next Republican administration. He seems to have convinced himself that Trump would be a vehicle for executing his grand vision of focusing American foreign policy on China while distancing the United States from, in his view, parasitic European allies and a hopelessly troubled Middle East.” (07/28/26)
- We’re Being Plunged Into Dystopia When We Could Be Living In Paradise
Source: Caitlin Johnstone
by Caitlin Johnstone“All this innovation that’s being poured into finding new ways to conduct mass military slaughter, to surveil and control our entire society, to restrict and manipulate the flow of information, to create artificial scarcity for products that people need, to create artificial demand for products that people do not need, to compete with rival corporations in order to turn billionaires into trillionaires — none of that needs to be happening. Humanity could be using its creativity and cleverness to make the world a better place instead.” (07/28/26)
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 07/28/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“New Report: Trump’s Deadly Boat Attacks Did Nothing To Halt Drug Trade.” (07/28/26)
- Better in Person, 07/28/26
Source: Freakonomics
“How Harlan Coben Keeps Readers Up Until 4 A.M.” (07/28/26)